


Sad Children

by Rebel_Leader05



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, F/M, Flashbacks, Foster Care, Hurt/Comfort, Possible smut, Rey Needs A Hug, Slow Burn, Teenage Ben, Teenage Rey, and occasional drama, for now nothing but angst, romance later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-18 15:56:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14216637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rebel_Leader05/pseuds/Rebel_Leader05
Summary: Seven-year-old Ben didn't want a sister. He didn't want his parents to take in the four-year-old foster kid named Rey who he had assumed would be a boy. He hadn't planned on liking her or being the big brother. He didn't expect to fall in love with her.He certainly didn't expect for her to be taken away a year later with no warning.Ten years later Ben is a senior and counting down the days until graduation when the new freshman catches his eye. She looks familiar, except her eyes have lost their sparkle and she no longer smiles. Can these sad kids find happiness again in each other?





	1. Prologue: A Friendship is Born

_Chapter One_

_“Do you have any last words?”_

_The king towered above the monster in the black mask, his sword raised in his right hand, about to deliver the killing blow._

_“Only that I’m sorry I will not live long enough to see my forces cut you down once and for all!” The masked man spat from where he knelt in the ground. If the king had been able to see the man’s eyes through the mask, he would have seen nothing but hatred in his cold gaze. “Your time will end soon enough! And I will live in infamy through death itself!”_

_The masked man laughed up until the king brought the sword upon the man, slicing through his neck and severing the head from the body._

* * *

 

 

“Ben, for the last time, will you put those toys away? They’re going to be here any minute!”

 

The seven-year-old boy rolled his eyes but began scooping his legos into the large blue bin beside the staircase. “I was about to get to the part where King Ren gets killed by Black Venom’s forces!”

 

“I’m sure you’ll have time enough for that later,” Leia Organa soothed as she bent down to gather the last of the litter that was scattered on her otherwise immaculate tiled floor. “Right now I need you to put those in your room.”

 

“Why does it matter?” Ben asked as he stood from the floor and bent to pick up the bin. “Another kid is going to live here. Shouldn’t they be happy there’s toys in the house?”

 

“Yes, but they won’t be happy to see our house a pigsty. If they think we’re unsuitable, they could put Rey somewhere else,” his mother replied distractedly. Ben watched as she threw her small handful of trash in the nearest trash bin, then stood thoughtfully, surveying her surroundings. “I might have time for one more vacuum.”

 

Ben took that as his cue to hurry upstairs before his mother could rope him into helping.

 

It wasn’t that he didn’t want another kid to live here, he thought as he elbowed the door to his room open and pushed his way inside. It would be fun to have someone else to play with. He just didn’t understand all the attention and fuss it was causing his parents. His mother had been fussing about the state of the house and what kinds of toys she should be buying while his father had been left the task of turning Ben’s playroom into a bedroom.

 

“Why can’t this kid sleep on the sofa?” Ben had whined once his parents broke the news to him. “I need that room!”

 

“Ben!” Mom was quick to scold him. “Your father and I aren’t raising you to become a spoiled, selfish brat! You’re about to have a brother or sister, which makes this child part of our family. Does family sleep on the sofa?”

 

Ben had frowned as he mumbled, “No.”

 

“No,” Mom had repeated sternly. “They don’t. And I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

 

That had been a month ago, and Dad had been hard at work ever since. Ben had been forced to choose which toys he wanted to keep and which ones he wanted to go to Uncle Luke’s house. Uncle Luke watched him sometimes after school while Mom and Dad were at work. His uncle worked from home so it was easy for him to pick Ben up and keep him until his parents could pick him up. It had been nearly impossible to choose which of his toys he wanted to temporarily give up, but he reassured himself that they weren’t really gone. Just moved.

 

Ben stowed the bin by his bed, then lingered as he heard the rumble of the vacuum roar to life. Tempted as he was to get his legos out and resume his game, he knew Mom would only call him down once she was done. So he sat on his bed and picked up his book, figuring he might as well pass the time while he waited.

 

Luckily he didn’t have to wait long. The vacuum shut off a couple minutes later, followed by Mom’s shout for him to get downstairs.

 

He had just reached the landing when the doorbell echoed through the entryway, causing Mom to up her pacing. She hurried over to him, made sure he looked as best as he could, then called for Dad to join them.

 

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Dad grumbled, earning him a stern look from Mom. Ben caught his dad’s eye and suppressed a smirk as Dad winked at him. They seemed to share the same thought: _Mom’s obsessing._

 

“Okay,” Mom said once she was satisfied everything and everyone was in place. “Here goes nothing.”

 

She reached out to open the door, Han and Ben standing a few feet behind her. Ben peered around her, curiosity getting the better of him, and saw two figures standing on the other side of the door.

 

“Hello there!” The adult exclaimed as she held out her hand in Leia’s direction. “You must be Mrs. Solo!”

 

“Organa-Solo,” Mom politely reminded her as she shook the woman’s. “Pleased to meet you.”

 

Ben stifled a yawn, already bored with the conversation, and turned his attention to the second, much smaller figure. His mood wasn’t improved by the sight of the girl who was going to be living with him.

 

He had been hoping for a boy from the moment his parents sat him down and explained that they had gotten the approval to become foster parents. They had agreed to take in a child who was in need of a home. As he thought back on the conversation that had taken place, he realized with a start that his parents hadn’t told him whether his future foster sibling would be a boy or a girl. They had only told him that the child’s name was Rey. He had assumed ‘Rey’ had been a boy’s name and thought no more about it.

 

Now, as he looked at the kid who was quite obviously a girl with her long brown hair, plain blue dress, and wide, scared eyes, he could honestly say he was disappointed. His dreams of having someone to play legos with were dashed.

 

“You must be Rey!” Mom exclaimed, her voice rising about an octave as she turned her attention to the girl. “I’m so happy you’re here!”

 

Mom stepped back and opened the door wider in invitation for Rey and the social worker to come in. Ben noticed with disdain that the girl had to be encouraged a little by the social worker and frowned. What was this girl’s problem?

 

“Rey, I’d like you to meet my husband, Han,” Mom began as she gestured to Dad, who smiled brightly at her. Then, to Ben’s dismay, she gestured to him.

 

“And this is my son Ben. Ben, this is Rey. She’s going to be your new foster sister.”

 

 _Just great,_ Ben thought sourly to himself as he reluctantly held out his right hand like his parents had told him to. _Just what I never wanted. A sister._

 

“Nice to meet you,” he grumbled as the social worker encouraged Rey to shake his hand. Seriously, did this girl have to be told to do everything?

 

“Nice to meet you,” the girl whispered. Ben was surprised when she looked up suddenly and met his gaze. As he looked down at her, he realized she couldn’t be much older four. He found himself wondering why she wasn’t with her parents. Were they dead? Or did they give her up? He wanted to ask her, but he was afraid to in front of his parents and the social worker. He would wait until later.

 

“Ben, why don’t you show Rey around while we discuss some things with Mrs. Gratton?” Mom asked in the tone of voice she used when her suggestions were really orders. “Maybe show her to her room and take her outside to your jungle gym.”

 

“You have a jungle gym here?” Rey perked up at that, and Ben knew the matter was settled. He had officially become a tour guide.

 

“Yeah. I’ll show it to you after your room.”

 

Ben reluctantly spent the rest of the afternoon with Rey. After he showed her where she would be sleeping and where the bathroom was, his room and his parents’ room, he showed her the kitchen, living room, and finally to the place she was most excited about.

 

The jungle gym was a swing set, slide, and playhouse, and it had been built for him by his dad and grandfather back when he had been Rey’s age. He hardly ever went in it anymore. That afternoon with Rey was the first time he played on it for what was probably a year.

 

Rey loosened up after Ben showed her the jungle gym. They spent the rest of the afternoon playing pretend, taking turns choosing what game to play. He wanted to play Space Battles, so he told her to play Black Venom while he played King Ren. He was pleased that she didn’t complain about her role as villain, and seemed to know the TV show and characters without having to ask what it was.

 

When it was her turn to choose, she wanted to play out various Disney movies, much to his dismay. But she hadn’t complained about Space Battles, so he held back his complaints when she told him to be Prince Eric, Beast, and Hans.

 

As the days became weeks and the weeks became months, Ben found himself liking his new foster sister. For a four-year-old, she wasn’t bad company. He could tell that Mom and Dad were enamored with her as well. She did all her chores without complaint and as she became more comfortable with them, she had let slip the words ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ a few times. He noticed her glow with happiness every time she said the monikers and hadn’t been corrected. He was secretly happy too, because maybe it meant his parents would adopt her. Once the six-month mark had passed, he had decided that if he had to have a sister, Rey wouldn’t be so bad. He secretly enjoyed the role of big brother, especially when they went to school and he noticed one of Rey’s preschool classmates picking on her. He never hesitated to step in and tell the other kids off.

 

Things had been going so well with Rey in the house that it had been a massive blow the day it all fell apart.

 

Mom and Dad had picked the two of them up from school, and Rey filled the car with her endless chatter about the day she had. Ben listened to it all, pretending to be bored but inwardly happy that she was so happy. He had been the first to notice the black car parked in front of their house, the same social worker who had dropped Rey off all those months ago standing by their front door.

 

“Why is Mrs. Gratton here?” Rey had wondered, though from the pale, crestfallen expression on her face Ben figured she already knew the answer.

 

“I don’t know. Hopefully it’s just another routine check,” Han replied gruffly as he pulled in to the driveway.

 

What followed next would be forever seared into Ben’s memory.

 

Mrs. Gratton had explained that Rey was being moved.

 

“I don’t understand,” Mom said furiously as she consoled a sobbing Rey, who was clutching tightly to her shirt as she cried uncontrollably. “Did we do something wrong?”

 

“No, of course not! These things just tend to happen. Another child’s placement fell through, so we’ve had to make some adjustments.”

 

It seemed like stupid logic, but what did Ben know? He was only eight-years-old (his birthday had been the previous month).

 

“What does that have to do with Rey? She’s happy here!” Han had burst out, and Ben couldn’t remember a time when he sounded so angry, and that included the time Ben had accidentally smashed the window of his beloved convertible Dad called _The Falcon._ “Doesn’t that count for anything?”

 

The social worker looked like wanted nothing more than for the ground to swallow her whole as she replied, “I’m really sorry.”

 

An hour later, after Rey’s clothes and most prized possessions were packed into the ratty suitcase she’d arrived with, Ben watched with a broken heart as she was placed into the social worker’s car. Her dark eyes were red and puffy, and she kept calling to Han and Leia to stop her from being taken, only she used ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ because that was how she saw the Organa-Solos. Ben tried to imagine someone taking him away from Mom and Dad, but nothing he thought of could equal the pain and sadness that Rey must’ve felt in that moment.

 

He wished he could do something. He wished he could open the back door of the car and take Rey into his arms and sooth her like he did whenever she had a bad day at school. He wished he could yell at the social worker that she couldn’t take his sister away.

 

But he was powerless and was all too aware of it.

 

All he could do was watch from where he stood between his parents as the social worker drove Rey away from their house and out of their lives. The only thing Ben could do was hope that she would have a good life, wherever she ended up.


	2. Chapter One: Ten Years Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An angsty Ben sees a familiar face.

_Chapter One_

Feeling invisible was something Ben Solo had long since gotten used to. It seemed that no matter where he was or what he was doing, whether surrounded by one person or hundreds, no one ever noticed he was there. Most days he was fine with it, but there were those few instances where it would have been nice to be acknowledged.

 

Walking down the halls of Alderaan High School, Ben glanced at the kids he passed, all of whom seemed to be in packs of twos or threes, wand waited for some kind of notice. He would have settled for eye contact, really. But everyone he passed was simply too busy to see him.

 

It was a typical Monday morning. Everyone had to gather to talk about the weekend, right down to the smallest detail. The snippets he heard as he passed group after group on his way to his locker were mostly what one would expect from teenagers: How the latest party was, or who hooked up with who. Ben rolled his eyes at all of it. It was just so mundane, so absolutely ordinary, that it was a wonder none of it put his classmates to sleep.

 

Ben’s locker was located at the very end of the senior hallway, which suited him fine. Most of the more popular seniors had fixed it so that their lockers were in the front, so he was as far from the rest of them as possible. His locker was surrounded by those owned by kids much like him. They skated under the radar, neither eliciting unwanted attention or any other kind. A few of them finally acknowledged him by nodding, but by that point Ben no longer cared. He ignored all of them as he approached his locker.

 

He wasn’t sure whether he was pleased or annoyed to find Armitage Hux waiting beside his row.

 

Armitage Hux was a tall, gangly red-haired boy who had moved to Alderaan back in their freshman year. The principal had thought it a good idea for Ben to show the new kid around, and a somewhat reluctant friendship had formed. Ben didn’t outwardly hate the boy, but he wasn’t entirely sure he liked him, either. Armitage was clingy, and had been satisfied to claim Ben as his only friend. Unlike most of the kids at Alderaan High, Armitage didn’t seem to care that he was one step away from loner status.

 

Ben just wished he wasn’t the one who qualified as the boy’s only friend.

 

“Hey, man. What’s up?” Armitage asked by way of greeting.

 

Ben just shrugged as he stopped in front of his locker and quickly spun the combination on his locker dial. “Not much. Same as every weekend.”

 

“Yeah, same here.” Armitage sounded dejected. “We should do something this weekend. That new action movie looks interesting. Want to go see it?”

 

Ben stifled a sigh as he collected the books he would need for his morning classes and shoved them into his plain black backpack. “Maybe. I might have other plans, though. There’s a college tour my parents were talking about signing me up for.”

 

“Again?” The dismay in Armitage’s voice grated on Ben’s nerves like nails on a chalkboard. “Haven’t you been through enough of them by now?”

 

Ben simply shrugged as he slammed his locker door closed. He wasn’t about to tell him that he wasn’t actually planning on going to college. He hadn’t told his parents yet, either, for that matter. He had grand plans of making it big with his art, maybe go to art school if he wrangled up enough money while he worked full time at the art studio he currently spent most of his time in. It was a plan his parents wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a dozen holes through, which was why he planned on keeping it to himself for as long as possible. No one, including Armitage Hux, needed to know about it.

 

“They’re pretty adamant on me making the most informed decision possible. If it gets them off my back, then whatever.”

 

That much was true. His mom had been nagging harder than ever lately for him to apply to colleges in order to secure the best possible future for himself. It bothered her to no end that it seemed as though her son had no ambition.

 

“What are you planning to do for the rest of your life?” She had snapped at him one particularly bad night a few weeks ago. “Sit around at home drawing pictures of those characters from Space Battles that you love so much? You’ll be disappointed to find there’s not a whole lot of money in that.”

 

Ben had gone to not so patiently explain that there could be good money if he did it properly. He had gone on about graphic design, or starting his own business coming up with varieties of fan art and selling it online and at conventions. It had gone right over her head, they had argued some more, and Ben no longer bothered trying to explain any of it to her anymore. Neither she nor his dad could understand his passion for art or the Space Battles fandom. To them, he was merely obsessed with a wildly popular TV show that had been cancelled five years ago and simply refused to grow up.

 

In a sense they were right. Not that he would ever admit it.

 

Ben was happy to leave Armitage at his first hour English class. He ducked inside the classroom and plopped himself in his usual seat in the back of the room, as far away from the prying eyes of his teacher as possible.

 

The class wasn’t his least favorite, but he definitely didn’t enjoy it, either. The required reading list in high school had yet to feature any science fiction or fantasy, or even anything from this decade, for that matter. Mostly he had spent the past four years reading books that had been published before his parents were born, only to fall asleep every time he opened them.

 

Math and chemistry weren’t much better. He skated by in those subjects, mostly because he held no passion for either of them. The only class he held any real passion for was art, which unfortunately came at the very end of the day.

 

When his first three classes were over for the day, he gratefully headed to the cafeteria for lunch.

 

Alderaan High was a closed campus school, which meant students weren’t allowed to leave for lunch. Ben and the rest of the student population were forced to eat the school food if they didn’t want to pass out from hunger. He reluctantly joined the line for the meal of the day, which turned out to be hamburgers, then found an empty table in the back of the cafeteria and sat down to eat.

 

He was slightly dismayed when Armitage Hux joined him a couple minutes later, but didn’t ask him to sit somewhere else. They ate in companionable silence. Ben’s thoughts drifted, as they usually did during lunchtime, to his drawings. He longed to be back in his room, working on his latest piece. He was currently focusing on King Ren, and his reluctant love interest, Lady Ameida. Their love was pure and defied the universe, but was doomed to failure by King Ren’s duty to his throne. Lady Ameida wasn’t worthy to be queen due to her poor birth; because she didn’t have royal or noble blood the crown would turn to rust and the power would no longer work. King Ren’s family refused to even acknowledge his love for the peasant woman, who gave herself a noble title in order to attempt to con her way to the throne. Despite her deceit, she fell in love with King Ren, and both of them spent most of the later seasons trying to find a way to make the crown accept her.

 

Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

 

Ben was lost in his musings, torn between wanting to finish his art piece and going back to watch the last season of Space Battles.

 

His musings were interrupted a few minutes later by the last thing ever expected to see. Or rather, the last _person_ he ever expected to see again.

 

Though she had aged ten years, it was impossible not to recognize the long brown hair, wide brown eyes, and unsure gait of the girl he’d been forced to watch leave his home and his life for what he’d thought would be forever. She carried a tray of food and stood in the center of the cafeteria, looking from table to table as though waiting for an invitation to sit down. Her expression mirrored the one she’d worn the day her social worker had brought her to his house all those years ago, so scared and unsure of her place in the world.

 

Rey was back.

 

As much as he’d dreamed of this happening, as often as he had pictured the scenario in his head, he had always thought he would walk right up to her and re-introduce himself, and then the rest of the years would fall away and it would be as though they had never been separated.

 

But of course it didn’t play out as he’d always imagined it would. He hated himself for being such a coward as he stood up the moment her back was to him, grabbed his tray, and took off out of the cafeteria before either Armitage or Rey could see him or question him.

 

He hated himself just a little bit more for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is short, but Ben got quiet after seeing Rey. :( Hopefully the next chapter will be out sooner than this one!

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow, with all the angst in store for our two favorite characters, I don't think it'll happen...


End file.
